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Jude Perry has a smile like a knife. While Jon was not bluffing when he said he has encountered people and creatures far more fearsome than her, he can’t pretend that she’s anything less than intimidating. She has admitted to gleeful serial murder right here in the middle of a cafe. She just squished the melted wax mess of her face back into a crude approximation of its past shape. Though he knows, somehow, that what she told him since he began her statement has been the truth... that does not make him trust her.
She might be truthful, but that is not because of some inherent virtue. It is because she finds scaring him with the bare, hideous facts of her life entertaining. Mike Crew, whose location she is taunting him with, will doubtlessly be no better.
But… Mike Crew is also an opportunity for greater knowledge. That man has appeared in more statements than almost any other figure and encountered what seems like a great many powers. If Jon could convince that man to tell him anything, many of his questions will be answered. Certainly more of them than he was able to answer here.
"Michael Crew?" Jon asks, just to confirm the obvious.
“That’s him,” Jude Perry confirms, “I know where you can find him.”
“Where?” Jon demands.
Jude smiles smugly. “Not for free.”
“Okay,” Jon says, because nothing can ever be easy, “what do you want?”
“Oh, nothing much,” she tells him, “just shake my hand.”
“W-what?” Jon asks. Surely he must have heard wrong. She doesn’t intend to do to his hand what was done to hers, what happened to Basira through the metal of those cuffs-
“You hurt my feelings, earlier,” she croons, “I want you to shake my hand.”
Jon just stares at her.
“Come on,” she assures him, “it won’t hurt.” There’s a cruel gleam in her eyes that contradicts her words.
“You and I both know that isn’t true,” Jon says. He puts his hands together, gently rubbing at the peeling cuticles on his right hand. Many of them are scabbed over, some of them actively bleeding from the ways that he’s picked at them during this stressful conversation.
“Maybe,” Jude says, “maybe not. It’s your choice.” She places one hand on her elbow and the other moves up to her face, prodding at her melted flesh, sculpting the contour of her jaw into something sharper.
“And if I choose not to?" Jon challenges.
“You leave here safe,” she tells him, “with no more information than before: just an aching hole where the knowledge should be.” She smiles. “A boring desolation, perhaps, but a desolation all the same.”
Jon bites his lip. If he leaves here without a lead, his trail will go cold. He has no idea what to search, how to obtain more files from his mysterious benefactor- There will be nowhere to proceed but Georgie’s spare bedroom, his anxieties, and his nightmares.
“Fine,” Jon bites out. He takes his right hand out of his left and tries to ignore the stinging sensation near his nails. It will be over soon enough, replaced with a far greater pain.
She smiles like his cruelest bully as she lies to him, "It won't hurt." Jon allows it as he forces himself to nod.
Jude Perry reaches out a hand and holds it in place, as if challenging him to an arm wrestling competition, one that Jon is guaranteed to lose. He does not take another moment to think before he reaches out and grabs it. He probably should have. He registers the searing hot pain rolling over his skin like molten lava only a moment before the scream erupts from his lips. He can smell his flesh sizzling under her touch.
She sounds smug as ever as she tells him, “I lied.” As though this is news: as though Jon didn't know exactly what he was getting into. He's in too much pain to retort, though, so screaming will have to suffice.